OLD THINGS CONSIDERED

Did you know. . . .
. . . about the New Brunswick & Highland Park based partnership that built one of the most successful homeware businesses in the country? One of these men, Jacob Janeway, was descended from a family that came to America in 1694.

Born in 1840, Jacob attended Rutgers College and served three years in the 14th Regiment New Jersey Volunteers during the Civil War, earning the rank of colonel.  Manassas Gap in ‘63, Wilderness in ‘64, and Petersberg in ’65 were some of the engagements he survived.  Upon his return home to New Jersey, he met and subsequently married Eliza A. Harrington in 1871 eventually raising four children.

 

His partner, Charles, was born 1847 in New York City.  He and the former Alice B. Robinson married in 1875 and they had five children.  Charles was an excellent businessman and the family prospered in his association with several New Brunswick businesses, including the Belcher & Nicholson Wall Paper factory.  By 1870, Charles had bought out Mr. Belcher's interest, and the company came to be known as Nicholson & Carpender.  Mr. Nicholson sold his share two years later to newly married Jacob Janeway and the firm was now known as Janeway & Carpender Wallpaper Manufacturing Company.

 

The business thrived and grew into a prominent industrial plant, first located in New Brunswick on Neilson Street where it once met the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks.  By 1886 they had outgrown this four-story building and moved to Peterson, Schuyler and Church Streets -- 12 acres in all, employing some 200 people.  (The old Janeway & Carpender building was eventually purchased by James Wood Johnson and became the first J & J building.)

Charles Carpender sold his share in the late '80s but the company name remained the same. Charles established a new company, the Norfolk and New Brunswick Hosiery Co., and would later become president of Middlesex General Hospital, known today as Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.  Jacob soon sold the business to the National Wall Paper Co., but purchased it back again eight years later when National dissolved in 1900.

In 1907, a terrible fire consumed all of the factory buildings, and the search was on again for a new facility. Janeway found a spacious site in Highland Park, and quickly rebuilt on land off of Cleveland Avenue.  The company never missed an order after the fire and within four months, the plant was fully operational running two shifts per day.

This plant had become the largest wallpaper factory in the country, with branches in Chicago and Philadelphia.  Jacob's son Lucius Porter Janeway and son-in-law Rev. Charles J. Scudder would serve in key positions at the firm.  The company continued to operate and employee hundreds until 1931 and a short street leading from Cleveland Avenue to the railroad tracks is named Janeway Avenue after this family.
Today you can see pristine Janeway and Carpender wallpaper samples dating from 1911, in the Special Collections and University Archives section of the Alexander Library.

- Ghislaine Darden